Nicola Samori — Paintings Fixed

For the first time, she wasn’t hiding her errors. She was using them.

That night, Elena took her most hated failed painting—a lopsided portrait she’d been about to throw away. With a palette knife, she scraped one eye away. Then she scratched into the shoulder. The canvas tore a little. Instead of panicking, she kept going—adding thin veils of oil, wiping parts off, revealing the clumsy sketch beneath. nicola samori paintings

Standing before a dark, baroque portrait by Samorì, she saw what looked like a saint’s face emerging from cracked black paint—except the face was flayed, layered, as if the image had been skinned. Golden halos were scratched and bleeding raw canvas beneath. For the first time, she wasn’t hiding her errors

The finished piece wasn’t pretty. But it was honest. Dark, layered, raw—like a memory peeling back to an older hurt. It was the first painting she truly loved. With a palette knife, she scraped one eye away

She learned: And sometimes, the most helpful thing an artist can do is learn to scrape away their own safe surface. If you're looking for a practical takeaway: When you feel stuck trying to make something “correct,” try Samorì’s method—introduce a controlled “flaw” (scrape, wipe, overlay, tear). You might find that what you thought was a mistake becomes the most alive part of the work.

Elena peered. Beneath the torn paint, she saw older layers—ghostly faces, abandoned compositions, the history of the painting itself. Samorì hadn’t destroyed the work. He had uncovered it. By scraping away the perfect surface, he let the struggle underneath become the story.

“This looks violent,” she whispered.